Region & History

Anyone wanting to know how Michigan got its beer should start in Detroit. From the 1840s onward, German immigrants arrived in large numbers, and with them came pale lagers. By around 1860, German brewers ran half of the city's breweries.

Bernhard Stroh began brewing in Detroit in 1850, initially for the German-speaking clientele. By the turn of the century, his brewery was producing around 300,000 barrels a year, roughly 350,000 hectoliters. During Prohibition, Stroh made alcohol-free "Near Beer" and sodas, and resumed brewing beer immediately after repeal in 1933.

Michigan was the first state to confirm the end of Prohibition in April 1933. Detroit's big breweries recovered afterward, but the operations closed one by one, with Stroh shutting down in 1985.

The second beginning came from a homebrew supply shop in Kalamazoo. Larry Bell opened the Kalamazoo Brewing Company in 1983 and started brewing himself in 1985, initially in a 15-gallon kettle, about 57 liters. The Bell's Eccentric Café pub was added in 1993. In the west of the state, Mike Stevens and Dave Engbers founded the Founders brewery in Grand Rapids in 1997. The early years went poorly, then the two shifted to bolder, more powerful beers.

Both pioneers now belong to large corporations. Bell's went to Lion, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Kirin, in 2021 when Larry Bell retired. The Spanish group Mahou San Miguel took a stake in Founders in 2014, and has owned the brewery outright since 2025. According to the Brewers Association's definition, a brewery counts as "independent" if less than 25 percent is owned by a company outside the craft scene. Michigan has no protected designation of origin for beer.